The Virginia Supreme Court has overturned a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit over a Virginia woman’s negative online review of a local contractor. The defendant’s attorneys say that the case marks an important ruling in preserving free speech rights online—judges shouldn't be able to edit or halt speech before a legal case has run its course. The injunction would have required editing of the review in question.

“The reason I got involved is that a preliminary injunction was issued here,” Paul Allen Levy, a well-known free speech lawyer with Public Citizen, told Ars. Levy is representing defendant Jane Perez in the case.

“If plaintiffs think all they have to do to get something shut down about them is run to court and ask for it, a lot more are going to do that,” he added. “It shouldn’t be easy to shut down speech, it should be hard. The win in the Virginia Supreme Court restores that balance. Defamation law is to protect people who are being truly defamed.”

A lower court had ruled in December 2012 that Perez, the homeowner, was required to edit her harsh comments on Yelp and Angie’s List against Christopher Dietz of Dietz Development, a Washington, DC contractor. After Public Citizen and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a 21-page petition for review to the Supreme Court of Virginia on December 26, the highest state court overturned the injunction just two days later, on December 28.

Perez accused Dietz of numerous things, including “damage to my home and work that had to be reaccomplished for thousands more than originally estimated.” The injunction was part of a larger ongoing case, filed in late October 2012, where Dietz sued Perez on allegations of defamation and an injunction against past and future statements. He is also seeking $750,000 in damages.

Unsatisfactory work, accusations of theft

Perez had hired Dietz to do painting, re-finishing, and various other construction-related tasks worth $53,000 at her home in 2011. However, she was unhappy with the work that Dietz and his crew were doing and terminated him from the job. Immediately afterwards, in June 2011, $2,500 worth of jewelry was stolen from her home, which Perez accused Dietz of taking. Later, in court, he denied stealing anything.

However, court documents show the outright theft accusation appears to have come later, while earlier she seemed to have been somewhat suspicious. At the time of the theft in 2011, she e-mailed him: “I don’t believe that you were involved and the police know this. If all 16 items are produced by the end of the day tomorrow (Thursday) then I will not press charges. Until this matter is resolved no one from the company should be in/near the house (less you dropping off the keys).”

She later said on Yelp that as a result of the theft, she acquired both a dog and a security system "for protection." Dietz then sued in his own name, rather than his company's, for the unpaid invoices, losing the case in summary judgment. Perez appears to have subsequently hired different contractors to complete what she evaluated as poor work.

Court documents also show that by early 2012, she began posting her accusations against Dietz on Yelp and Angie’s List, and later began making formal complaints against Dietz in various local DC and Virginia government agencies, and accused him of practicing construction in Virginia without a license.

Despite the setback, Milt Johns, Dietz’ attorney, remained confident.

“We did not have a chance to respond to the petition before the ruling,” he told Ars. “The injunction was only a preliminary one. The case continues for a jury trial on damages.”

Even if Dietz ultimately proves victorious, it seems likely that he’d lose in the court of public opinion due to search engine results pointing to all of this history. Heck, this even has a name: the Streisand effect.

Promoted Comments

This is very interesting. I had a expensive bike ripped off in the parking lot of a local bakery and wine tasting shops that I had been a patron for years. I used Yelp to write 5 star reviews of the shops, but ending my review that no one wants to come out to their SUV and find their biked ripped off. They should consider video cams and a patrol. The short of the story is my bike was recovered within days by the police and I believe the business owner had something to do with it. About two weeks later I get an email from Yelp telling me I had violated their terms and they pulled my reviews. What a racket, but I got my bike back, and it is not against the law to warn fellow customers that thieves are patrolling the parking lot, but it does violate Yelps terms of agreement. Yea right ...

Good I agree, Until the case has run its full course no one should be stifling anyone's speech. If it turns out it was defamation then you can sue for that and get damages as a result after the courts found you innocent of the suit filed against you. Until then whatever someone wants to say they can say at their own risk.

This is very interesting. I had a expensive bike ripped off in the parking lot of a local bakery and wine tasting shops that I had been a patron for years. I used Yelp to write 5 star reviews of the shops, but ending my review that no one wants to come out to their SUV and find their biked ripped off. They should consider video cams and a patrol. The short of the story is my bike was recovered within days by the police and I believe the business owner had something to do with it. About two weeks later I get an email from Yelp telling me I had violated their terms and they pulled my reviews. What a racket, but I got my bike back, and it is not against the law to warn fellow customers that thieves are patrolling the parking lot, but it does violate Yelps terms of agreement. Yea right ...

More than the actual job, the issue here is free speech vs. defamation, which can be tricky. I think having a second contractor (third party) as witness could easily clear up the validity of the complaints.

Of course, asking for $750,000 after you sent in your goons to steal from her speaks volumes about character.

I think you're right. I personally would rather lean toward the free speech side - because I feel that is most important here. From, the article, the contractor already lost one court case which ended in summary judgement, so I am thinking this recent law suit is a case of a) sour grapes and b) attempted revenge, which seems to be the case for the jewelry as well. I truly hope this one is thrown out in summary judgement for the defendant as well. Just my $.02

More than the actual job, the issue here is free speech vs. defamation, which can be tricky. I think having a second contractor (third party) as witness could easily clear up the validity of the complaints.

Of course, asking for $750,000 after you sent in your goons to steal from her speaks volumes about character.

You don't know if he stole the jewelry, whether one of his hired guys did it by his request, or even of their own volition.

The guy is asking for $750k because even if he wins the case, she has potentially damaged his reputation beyond repair (you can't erase everything she has posted off the internet). Although I think $750k is a gross estimate, by any standard, it's his right to ask for as much as the court will allow.

Either way... it may sound like the guy is a sleaze, but innocent until proven guilty.

Good I agree, Until the case has run its full course no one should be stifling anyone's speech. If it turns out it was defamation then you can sue for that and get damages as a result after the courts found you innocent of the suit filed against you. Until then whatever someone wants to say they can say at their own risk.

On the flip side, let's say for the sake of argument that the homeowner is a nutcase who has strange expectations of the work to be done. I have no idea if that's the situation here, but let's pretend. I've had my fair share of customers that hire me to evaluate if something is possible, then don't think they should have to pay when I tell them it isn't.

Between the time the case is filed and the time the case is settled, how many potential customers are going to call someone else because this review accused the contractor of shoddy work and being a thief? I'd have lost a ton of customers if customers that didn't like my answers went around accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about (let's also pretend I always know what I'm talking about, for argument's sake).

I totally agree that reviews should be open and honest and all that, but let's say at the end of the day the review is shown to be full of crap and a bunch of lies and all that. Let's also say the guy can show via charts and graphs that he averaged $80k worth of work a month before the review and $40k per month after, and the case took eight months to be resolved. Would you support a verdict against the plaintiff for $320k and a forcible removal of the review? That would "set things right" but be a HUUUUUUUGE financial burden for the plaintiff, which would probably never get repaid.

If the case against the homeowner has some merit, as in, the review seems like it might not be on the up and up and the contractor can show that he's losing business, likely due to the review, is asking for the review to be temporarily hidden that chilling of a precedent?

As I said, I don't know much about this specific case, but I can easily imagine cases where the contractor would be right in asking it to be removed.

I learned from personal experience that it is fairly easy for a business to suppress a negative review on Yelp, since I wrote one and within a few days the review got moved to the "filtered" section, where it is inconvenient for anyone to read. Google "animal resorts yelp" then read the unfiltered reviews and the filtered reviews and you will see a pattern. Yelp tends to discount reviews by people who don't normally write reviews; I think most people can't be bothered to write a Yelp review unless they have a shockingly bad experience. For an articulate blog post on why you should take Yelp with a grain of salt, Google "Justin Vincent Yelp"

Out of all the effects out there, the Streisand effect is the most fun to watch as a spectator. (If it were a little easier to follow, the butterfly effect would be high on the list as well...) It's like the social manifestation of irony.

This doesn't have all that much to do with this story, but every time I see Yelp being discussed I like to take the time to say that while the idea behind consumer review aggregation is fine and dandy, Yelp's "filter" makes their content almost completely worthless. The overwhelming majority of positive reviews for my business get filtered and hidden behind a tiny link at the bottom of the page that demands a Captcha challenge to bypass while an unlikely majority of negative reviews somehow pass their filter requirements and remain publicly visible.

It can be so difficult to get positive reviews to stick on Yelp (and so many people use it) that I can completely understand why this guy fought this so seriously, regardless of whether or not he had the bad review coming. Low ratings on Yelp can literally shutter a small business, which would be just fine if the rating that Yelp displays had any relation whatsoever to the actual body of reviews posted by users. Instead it is determined entirely by which reviews Yelp decides they want to show, a process that as best I can tell involves some amount of black magic with a pinch of extortion thrown in for good measure.

For the record, I'm not disputing any of the negative reviews that exist for my business. When we screw up, we deserve the black eye. What I'm disputing is that Yelp appears to thrive on making sure that black eye never heals. Some math: I have 147 reviews on Yelp. 17 are publicly viewable (5 positive, 12 negative) and used to determine my business rating. Meanwhile I have 130 filtered reviews, of which 7 are negative. I can't figure it out and Yelp isn't talking. Well, they do talk but mostly just ask for advertising money.

I've heard way too many reports from local businesses who rebuffed Yelp's offers to join their service for $300 a month (or more), then all of the sudden more negative reviews suddenly started popping up outside of the filtering to not be suspicious. That's been personal experience (I had some social butterfly friends who had a knack for getting to know locals) as well as lengthy threads on places like Reddit. Yeah, I know, it's 'anecdata', but Yelp has every incentive to make things better for their paying customers, and worse for their freeloaders.

Sure, paying them you get the ability to hide bad reviews yourself, and some other neato things that let you groom your public face a bit, but unless the things Yelp are offering are significant, why pay? If it's equally effective for all places, then why would anyone pay? They'd die by 'tragedy of the commons', wouldn't they?

I had a very bad experience that involved terrible treatment by a waitress at a restaurant. I filed a written email complaint with the owner, and he assured me that it would be handled. At the behest of the manager, I went there again. That time, two months later, the same thing happened involving the same person (who was also promoted). I then sent another email to the owner detailing what happened, only to be told that he would look into it. Three weeks passed and I followed up with an email, which went ignored.

One week later, I posted the following review on Trip Advisor:

“The food is good, but some of the staff is very rude. Complaints are not taken seriously.”

A couple of days later I received an email from the owner attacked my character, threatening legal action for my Trip Advisor review, and claiming that I had a personal vendetta against a member of his staff.

Trip Advisor has since deleted my review, and when pressed said, in part:

“It appears that your review has been caught up in our automatic filters, which set aside content that we feel might require special attention. Unfortunately, I cannot go into detail about what triggered the removal nor can I publish your post.”

I sent them another email requesting the reasons and they responded with:

“Hello,

Thank you for your response.

As per your previous correspondence with Garrett, we unfortunately cannot go into detail about what triggered the removal, nor can we publish your post.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Best Regards,”

So it appears that all one has to do is threaten legal action against Trip Advisor (which the owner must have done), and negative reviews get censored.

After reading this and looking at some of the court documents, it looks like she got an old friend to do a lot of work on her house (with no down payment) and fired him because his painter was sloppy. She didn't give him a chance to finish the job or fix what she didn't like about it.

I'm not saying that the bad reviews should be taken down, just that they should be modified to remove the theft accusations (She had no proof and later found her stuff in boxes she hadn't unpacked yet), and the part where she said that his case about her not paying him was thrown out because it had no merit, it was because he filed the papers late.

If you get a big, noisy review like this, it can poison your business. Even assuming Yelp isn't pulling something (haven't they been sued over that?). The review doesn't even necessarily have to be accurate.

I am surprised that the internet freedom legal groups are getting involved because any legal precedents that come out of this mess will be muddied by all of the extra baggage and they run the risk of getting sucked into this drama themselves.

Your point appears to be that freedom of speech in the online era can be tricky, and therefore internet freedom legal groups generally shy away from this out of fear of tarnishing their own reputation. Or something.

What we need is a review site for review sites.Amazon's product reviews and star ratings seem to be the standard to which these so-called "services" should aspire - publish them all and let the reader determine the relevance and truth, as well as the reviewer's own history and chance of astroturfing. A ton of good reviews and one really bad one, or vice versa, would make things rather obvious. By not doing things this way, they seem to be pretty clearly in the extortion racket.

This is very interesting. I had a expensive bike ripped off in the parking lot of a local bakery and wine tasting shops that I had been a patron for years. I used Yelp to write 5 star reviews of the shops, but ending my review that no one wants to come out to their SUV and find their biked ripped off. They should consider video cams and a patrol. The short of the story is my bike was recovered within days by the police and I believe the business owner had something to do with it. About two weeks later I get an email from Yelp telling me I had violated their terms and they pulled my reviews. What a racket, but I got my bike back, and it is not against the law to warn fellow customers that thieves are patrolling the parking lot, but it does violate Yelps terms of agreement. Yea right ...

It did violate the Yelp terms.. you were supposed to review the establishment, not the surrounding. You could have put another review of the surrounding. That would have been valid.

If you get a big, noisy review like this, it can poison your business. Even assuming Yelp isn't pulling something (haven't they been sued over that?). The review doesn't even necessarily have to be accurate.

The overall aggregation would mitigate outliers such as what you identified. Yelp is a crowd source/social media model.

I learned from personal experience that it is fairly easy for a business to suppress a negative review on Yelp, since I wrote one and within a few days the review got moved to the "filtered" section, where it is inconvenient for anyone to read. Google "animal resorts yelp" then read the unfiltered reviews and the filtered reviews and you will see a pattern. Yelp tends to discount reviews by people who don't normally write reviews; I think most people can't be bothered to write a Yelp review unless they have a shockingly bad experience. For an articulate blog post on why you should take Yelp with a grain of salt, Google "Justin Vincent Yelp"

You ran into Yelp's spam filter. So if it matters that much, why don't keep contributing to Yelp so that its spam filters no longer identifies you ('orange heads') as a possible spam source and un-filters your review.

Yelp tends to discount reviews by people who don't normally write reviews

I'd like to know why this surprises anyone. Most of the reviews written by "people who don't normally write reviews" are worthless, whereas people who care enough to critically consider businesses explain why they give the ratings they do. As a reader, you can empathize with or discount reviewers and get an idea of how you'll feel about a place; Yelp should be about reviews, not voting, and the kind of people who are likely to only care about votes are unlikely to rely on Yelp as much as you'd think. Occasionally I'll look into why a place has lots of filtered reviews, but often I'll assume they're family, fakes, or paid for, because that's the most common explanation in my experience. Even if not, it's always people who signed up because an owner asked them to.

After about 3-10 reviews and a few upvotes your reviews magically get lifted out of filtered status. If so many businesses didn't constantly create fake profiles to praise themselves and slam their competitors, maybe Yelp would be more mellow about one-timers, but we have the world we have.

Oh, and the mobile app has a "Maverick" check-in badge, for people who go to lots of low-rated businesses, so don't lose all hope.

So it appears that all one has to do is threaten legal action against Trip Advisor (which the owner must have done), and negative reviews get censored.

Trip Advisor is a scam. And Yelp has also filtered my review.

That's the nuclear option and nearly every web site on the internet, including gigantic ones like Amazon, will remove a review, a post, or anything else over threatened legal action. There really isn't anything special about TA in that regard, although someone willing to threaten legal action too many times will probably find himself delisted and banned eventually. Plus, how is it a "scam" if you didn't pay to post your review?

I wish yelp would cease to exist, if only to force apple to use an actual useful service for siri so she doesn't tell me the nearest dairy queen is 87 miles away when I'm 2 miles down the road from one.

Good I agree, Until the case has run its full course no one should be stifling anyone's speech. If it turns out it was defamation then you can sue for that and get damages as a result after the courts found you innocent of the suit filed against you. Until then whatever someone wants to say they can say at their own risk.

On the flip side, let's say for the sake of argument that the homeowner is a nutcase who has strange expectations of the work to be done. I have no idea if that's the situation here, but let's pretend. I've had my fair share of customers that hire me to evaluate if something is possible, then don't think they should have to pay when I tell them it isn't.

Between the time the case is filed and the time the case is settled, how many potential customers are going to call someone else because this review accused the contractor of shoddy work and being a thief? I'd have lost a ton of customers if customers that didn't like my answers went around accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about (let's also pretend I always know what I'm talking about, for argument's sake).

I totally agree that reviews should be open and honest and all that, but let's say at the end of the day the review is shown to be full of crap and a bunch of lies and all that. Let's also say the guy can show via charts and graphs that he averaged $80k worth of work a month before the review and $40k per month after, and the case took eight months to be resolved. Would you support a verdict against the plaintiff for $320k and a forcible removal of the review? That would "set things right" but be a HUUUUUUUGE financial burden for the plaintiff, which would probably never get repaid.

If the case against the homeowner has some merit, as in, the review seems like it might not be on the up and up and the contractor can show that he's losing business, likely due to the review, is asking for the review to be temporarily hidden that chilling of a precedent?

As I said, I don't know much about this specific case, but I can easily imagine cases where the contractor would be right in asking it to be removed.

When it all comes down to it, websites like Yelp and Angie's List are just people's opinions. Nothing more and nothing less. I understand that you can't make everyone happy and sometimes customers will be a little (or a lot) unreasonable. Personally I'd be a bit suspicious if a contractor only had glowing reviews.

So it appears that all one has to do is threaten legal action against Trip Advisor (which the owner must have done), and negative reviews get censored.

Trip Advisor is a scam. And Yelp has also filtered my review.

Not necessarily.

I have some (indirect) involvement in a small website that accepts comments for businesses.

We have discovered that almost all negative reviews are left by employees or family of competitors. There's a steady stream of negative reviews that are invalid and it's almost impossible to tell the difference between a legitimate complaint and a biased one.

You can't verify the truth of every complaint and most of them are bullshit. If unsure, better to delete than allow it. The same applies to *all* listings. Every single listing receives complaints, and especially if a venue has mostly positive review and then the occasional negative one... then that negative review is likely to be deleted. The more blatantly negative, the more so.

In my experience Yelp are pretty quick to remove legitimate complaints about businesses.

I once wrote a scathing review about the shitty service at a local fast-food restaurant. I described how I went there with several coworkers, we arrived as a group, my coworkers' orders were all taken, I was then ignored, tried to get the staff's attention and was told to wait, when they arrived with the first of my coworkers' orders I pointed out that I had still not gotten a chance to order, told to wait until "these other people" had gotten their orders and practically threatened with security if I didn't shut up (at no point had I been disrespectful, merely trying to point out that my coworkers had already started getting the food they ordered while I had not even been allowed to order my food yet, and no, I'm not one of those people who yell and scream in any way in these situations, really, no, I've worked in customer service myself and I'd never behave that way). Finally, as my coworkers received the last of what they had ordered I got a glare and a comment "So, what did you want?", I told them I had planned on eating there with my coworkers but that I was no longer interested and left. A couple of days after I posted that review it was removed.

I've later found out a few other people have left similar reviews about that restaurant and also had them removed..

Just a comment from the side of a contractor. If the theft accusation was not included (she didn't witness it), this wouldn't be news. Since she made the allegation public, she must accept the risk,otherwise she has every right to state the truth in her reviews. The fact that another contractor "fixed" the "problems" (whether real of just perceived ) will help her case. I don't believe in paid site reviews ( Angies list, et al) or ones that are biased (for or against companies/consumers) (yelp) or ones that are not verified and permanent (rip off report). My best advertising is word of mouth and almost all my customers will allow potential clients to see my work in person, so I don't worry about 1 or 2 bad reviews. Bottom line freedom of speech trumps alleged defamation any day.

So it appears that all one has to do is threaten legal action against Trip Advisor (which the owner must have done), and negative reviews get censored.

Trip Advisor is a scam. And Yelp has also filtered my review.

That's the nuclear option and nearly every web site on the internet, including gigantic ones like Amazon, will remove a review, a post, or anything else over threatened legal action. There really isn't anything special about TA in that regard, although someone willing to threaten legal action too many times will probably find himself delisted and banned eventually. Plus, how is it a "scam" if you didn't pay to post your review?

Let me get this straight: Direct compensation must occur for their service to qualify as a scam???

I don’t think so. Go to TA’s web site and look at the tag line at the bottom, “Trip Advisor feature reviews and advice…”

If reviews are censored and therefore unreliable as a whole, then everyone that relies on them is being scammed.

So it appears that all one has to do is threaten legal action against Trip Advisor (which the owner must have done), and negative reviews get censored.

Trip Advisor is a scam. And Yelp has also filtered my review.

Not necessarily.

I have some (indirect) involvement in a small website that accepts comments for businesses.

We have discovered that almost all negative reviews are left by employees or family of competitors. There's a steady stream of negative reviews that are invalid and it's almost impossible to tell the difference between a legitimate complaint and a biased one.

You can't verify the truth of every complaint and most of them are bullshit. If unsure, better to delete than allow it. The same applies to *all* listings. Every single listing receives complaints, and especially if a venue has mostly positive review and then the occasional negative one... then that negative review is likely to be deleted. The more blatantly negative, the more so.

"... better to delete than allow it." So in your mind, the positive reviews are more valuable to the public than the negative ones. I don't think so.

As @dm00 mentions above, you have to balance the potential for harm against the right to speak freely and while I agree the bar should be higher than it was in this case, it shouldn't be a lot higher since courts can take forever to complete their process and most small businesses live or die off of their reputation and can't afford lengthy and expensive court cases making them vulnerable to less than ethical people.

My brother was defamed by a customer who didn't like the results of his land survey and it took two separate court proceedings spanning 2 years to silence this person who was very inappropiately slandering my brother. In fact, the second judge had to tell this person that if they appeared in front of him again, they would go to jail to get them to stop the slander.

More than the actual job, the issue here is free speech vs. defamation, which can be tricky. I think having a second contractor (third party) as witness could easily clear up the validity of the complaints.

Of course, asking for $750,000 after you sent in your goons to steal from her speaks volumes about character.

I was wondering what actions the homeowner took to document the poor workmanship. First off, I'd be very hesitant to hire an unlicensed contractor (duh, there's a REASON they're unlicensed!!). Once the quality of work is observed and determined to be inferior, she should have taken a boat-load of pictures to document what was wrong. The article doesn't say if she did that. If not, it seems to me it becomes a he said/she said case. The missing jewelry is why I don't let contractors have keys to my house, nor do I leave them alone without supervision. Clearly, at the minimum, I would remove said valuables if it were necessary to give them unrestricted access to the house.

This is very interesting. I had a expensive bike ripped off in the parking lot of a local bakery and wine tasting shops that I had been a patron for years. I used Yelp to write 5 star reviews of the shops, but ending my review that no one wants to come out to their SUV and find their biked ripped off. They should consider video cams and a patrol. The short of the story is my bike was recovered within days by the police and I believe the business owner had something to do with it. About two weeks later I get an email from Yelp telling me I had violated their terms and they pulled my reviews. What a racket, but I got my bike back, and it is not against the law to warn fellow customers that thieves are patrolling the parking lot, but it does violate Yelps terms of agreement. Yea right ...

As long as you aren't blaming the establishment for the thefts I see no problem. I see no harm in giving fellow bike riders a heads up. I've been seeing lots of questionable things being posted about Yelp and I am starting to believe them. I was in the mood for some Mexican food and tried using their app to find some. I found what was supposed to be, according to the many reviews, the best authentic Mexican restaurant in the area. I went and was pretty disappointed. The food wasn't by any stretch of the imagination authentic Mexican food. Plus the food was either bland, the cooks never heard of marinating/seasoning meat, or tasted odd. There is no way in hell anyone would call what that place was serving as Mexican food. I have since taken Yelp off my phone. It's pretty obvious all the reviews for that place were bogus.

Good I agree, Until the case has run its full course no one should be stifling anyone's speech. If it turns out it was defamation then you can sue for that and get damages as a result after the courts found you innocent of the suit filed against you. Until then whatever someone wants to say they can say at their own risk.

On the flip side, let's say for the sake of argument that the homeowner is a nutcase who has strange expectations of the work to be done. I have no idea if that's the situation here, but let's pretend. I've had my fair share of customers that hire me to evaluate if something is possible, then don't think they should have to pay when I tell them it isn't.

Between the time the case is filed and the time the case is settled, how many potential customers are going to call someone else because this review accused the contractor of shoddy work and being a thief? I'd have lost a ton of customers if customers that didn't like my answers went around accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about (let's also pretend I always know what I'm talking about, for argument's sake).

I totally agree that reviews should be open and honest and all that, but let's say at the end of the day the review is shown to be full of crap and a bunch of lies and all that. Let's also say the guy can show via charts and graphs that he averaged $80k worth of work a month before the review and $40k per month after, and the case took eight months to be resolved. Would you support a verdict against the plaintiff for $320k and a forcible removal of the review? That would "set things right" but be a HUUUUUUUGE financial burden for the plaintiff, which would probably never get repaid.

If the case against the homeowner has some merit, as in, the review seems like it might not be on the up and up and the contractor can show that he's losing business, likely due to the review, is asking for the review to be temporarily hidden that chilling of a precedent?

As I said, I don't know much about this specific case, but I can easily imagine cases where the contractor would be right in asking it to be removed.

Yes, but in the end, your work (good or bad) will shine true. By that I mean that if you do good honest work, the majority of your reviews will be positive. Most rational people will understand that there will be the odd irrational person with expectations above what is considered acceptable. So the odd bad review is inevitable. However, as stated, if you do good honest work, your overall reviews will be good.

When I check out reviews for anything, a major thing I look for is the number (percentage) of bad to good reviews. I don't expect even the best product/service/contractor to have absolutely no bad reviews. However, If this number is fairly insignificant, then it's a good bet that the product/service/contractor overall is good. However, if there is a high percentage of bad to good reviews, then it's a good chance this particular product/service/contractor has some issues and I should probably avoid using them.

In this case, I get the overall feeling that this contractor is being very defensive, and leads me to ask, what is he being so defensive for? If he does good honest work overall, then the majority of his reviews should reflect that. If not, well then...

Just a comment from the side of a contractor. If the theft accusation was not included (she didn't witness it), this wouldn't be news. Since she made the allegation public, she must accept the risk,otherwise she has every right to state the truth in her reviews. The fact that another contractor "fixed" the "problems" (whether real of just perceived ) will help her case. I don't believe in paid site reviews ( Angies list, et al) or ones that are biased (for or against companies/consumers) (yelp) or ones that are not verified and permanent (rip off report). My best advertising is word of mouth and almost all my customers will allow potential clients to see my work in person, so I don't worry about 1 or 2 bad reviews. Bottom line freedom of speech trumps alleged defamation any day.

But all it takes is 1 or 2 bad reviews to put doubt in the minds of prospective new clients. Especially if they only know 1 or 2 people you have done work for. MANY people use the sites you mentioned and they in fact to drive business your way or street it away from you. your online rep is just as important then your word of mouth rep. today i'd say your online rep is in many way more important. People tend to Google a business before even calling them to see what people are saying about their work.

You forgot that she alerted the police that she had found all of the "stolen" jewelry in a different box than she had thought she had them in. Nothing was stolen. That accusation is completely baseless and is why this is an easy win defamation case.